Be prepared

I met friends for dinner in late June and I smiled when they expressed surprise that I turned up on time. “We thought for sure you’d be caught up in that latest one, you know, the virus? Aren’t you affected by that?” The answer was yes and thankfully no. Yes, in that Petya was the latest in a string of ransomware worms exploiting a Windows vulnerability allegedly found by the NSA. No, in that the patch that stopped Petya was already in place and confirmed to be in place in May when WannaCry raised its ugly head. Like many things in life and information security, it came back to being prepared.

Being prepared has always been a big thing with me— I was a girl guide. More accurately – I was a brownie, guide, pathfinder, and ranger. I represented Canada at an overseas international girl guide camp. I volunteered at the girl guide group run out of Toronto’s Sick Kids hospital. I worked summers at the Ontario provincial Girl Guide Camp, Doe Lake. I even portaged a canoe through Maple Leaf Gardens as a girl guide. Clearly, I was a pretty committed girl guide.

Given that background, I loved reading about the Girl Scouts of America launching their new cybersecurity merit badges. The motto “Be Prepared” now extends to young women’s online lives – helping them understand the risks and being prepared to protect themselves, their privacy and their identities while leveraging the Internet’s terrific power and potential. My past and my present brought together in a single badge.

So much of information security work isn’t glamorous. It’s the day-in, day-out work – tracking and closing vulnerabilities, applying patches, removing obsolete and unsupported software, retiring old hardware, staying abreast of the latest threats and research, doing penetration tests on applications and networks. But when you’re ready, you can handle just about anything life or the Internet throws at you. The girl guides taught me that but my career as an information security professional has proven it to me – nothing beats being prepared.

PS I can’t wait until I can hire my first information security professional who can claim they got a merit badge in cybersecurity!